News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 576 - 600 of 1887
The Raiders hosted their annual Powerhouse Wrestling Tournament in Coulee Dam Dec. 22, bringing in competitors from as far away as Napavine, Washington and filling the Lake Roosevelt gym with over 100 athletes from 10 schools participating and finding out what they need to work on for the rest of the season. Three schools didn't make it because of the weather. The Raider boys' team had 11 members place in eight of the 13 weight categories, coming in third as a team with a score of 154, behind...
The Care and Share Food Bank last Friday gave out Christmas baskets of food to bout 150 clients, including families and a lot of elderly folks, said manager Carol Nordine. That number indicates need is up from past years. Last year’s big Christmas giveaway drew 115. A story in The Star recently reported that Second Harvest, a major food distributor to local food banks, is cutting back deliveries in Okanogan County. Care and Share is on the same route, but Nordine noted they only supply about 10 percent of the locals pantry’s supplies. Con...
The Raiders topped a mixed weekend with a very large lead Monday night over White Swan in Coulee Dam, beating the Cougars 85-44. The win came on the heels of a one-point loss to Omak on Saturday, which itself had followed a huge victory over Brewster's Bears, 71-60, on their home court, a game about which Raider Coach Jeremy Crollard had not been optimistic due to past experience with uneven officiating. "We left it all on the court when it came to Brewster," Crollard said. The Raiders played...
The Lady Raiders met a challenge by White Swan Monday night, fresh off a defeat by the Omak Lady Pioneers Saturday, to win 64-46. Starting off slow in the first quarter, Lake Roosevelt trailed to finish it behind three points, 11-8. And by the half the Lady Raiders had just reversed the advantage to lead 27-23. The pace was about to change. After the halftime break, Lake Roosevelt went into dominate mode, racking up another 37 points while holding White Swan again to 23 more. "The girls came...
School board directors will study whether to allow weighted grade point averages to be considered for graduation. Considering whether to pass a recommended policy on high school graduation requirements Monday night, Chairman George LaPlace and Superintendent Paul Turner each spoke in favor of tabling that discussion to give time for more discussion with students and staff. Weighted GPAs can add more points for higher-level courses. An honors course might gain half a point on a regular class in the same subject area, for instance. “It takes a li...
Local mayors decided against further studying whether their Regional Board of Mayors could consider taking over the Spring Canyon Cemetery. Meeting as the RBOM Dec. 7, the mayors voted to drop their research into taking over ownership of the cemetery currently owned by the local Lions Club. The club had approached the mayors about that possibility last August, and they’ve been looking into it ever since. Coulee Dam Mayor Bob Poch said his council was not in favor of it. City Clerk Stefani Bowden had asked the Municipal Research Services Corpora...
Sometimes, if it’s not one thing, it’s another when you’re dealing a federal agency that gives you money. Or takes it back. Nespelem’s school board learned Monday that some of their Impact Aid money was being clawed back. Impact Aid is a federal grant program for local educational agencies that have lost local property tax revenue due to the presence of non-taxable federal land. Superintendent Effie Dean explained that the Impact Aid agency had found the school district’s 2019-2020 school year application for Impact Aid faulty, for two years...
A trailer housing two families on E Street burned down Thursday on one of the coldest nights of the year so far, burning one man badly. "This is the devastation that no family should have to go through," Kimberly Minks wrote in an online message the next day. The fire started about 7 p.m. Dec. 1 on E Street, just west of the Bridgeport Highway. A friend, Crysta Harris, posted on Facebook her two kids were visiting at the time. She explained that two families were living in the home - a man with...
City leaders in Grand Coulee met with their engineers Monday to learn about options being recommended for upgrades to their wastewater treatment plant, estimated to cost $10.5 million. The good news is that the Dept. of Ecology has already stated it can fund the project. "You're in a real interesting situation," Gray and Osborne Engineer Nancy Wetch told the city council, noting that she's never seen funding promised without an application even submitted. But funded doesn't mean free. Wetch met...
The Grand Coulee Dam Area Chamber of Commerce's first in-person winter event since 2019 was a success Saturday night, as community members turned out for the Vintners and Brewers dinner and auction. The annual auction was held as an online affair in 2020 and 2021 to meet restrictions or advice on in-person gatherings during the COVID-19 emergency. "It was huge," said Executive Director Roni Smith. "We couldn't have done it without all the volunteers, businesses, and community members who bought...
When it was all said and done, the Grand Coulee Dam School District Proposition No. 1 passed in each of the four counties where it was on the ballot earlier this month. The levy election was certified by county election officials in the office of each county auditor, who had to transmit their certifications on Tuesday to the state’s secretary of state. It was a squeaker, with vote tallying and signature checking often showing a winning margin in the 1-2% range and only in one county at times. But the final tally wasn’t as close. Overall, 1,7...
Electric City will set aside some of the money collected from tourists to make improvements to Coulee Playland, which sits on city-managed land. The city learned last month that it would need to invest in the campground to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act with an estimated $1 million in upgrades over coming years. City Clerk/Treasurer Peggy Nevsimal told the city council at their Nov. 22 meeting that the city usually budgets to spend money, itself, from its hotel/motel tax fund, but rarely if ever actually uses that budget line...
Lake Roosevelt's senior class trip to San Diego got a thumbs up from the school board Monday night, a reward for hard work at fundraising. "I have yet to see these kids not make goal," said class advisor Brandi Hansen. "They know what they want to do, and they're great at it." Their big trip at the end of May will take them on a tour of the USS Midway for at least three hours, to a nearby amusement park, and to the San Diego Zoo. The Midway is an aircraft carrier that was decommissioned in 1992...
Law enforcement officers from several agencies descended on a mobile home in Electric City Monday afternoon, after a bail bondsman reported he'd been shot at from inside the home and returned fire. He was there with a warrant to collect Christopher Morgan, 38, who had failed to appear for a court date in Spokane, according to Grand Coulee Police. The mobile home sits at the corner of Fifth Street and Sunny Drive toward the northwest corner of Electric City's residential neighborhood close to...
The National Weather Service is warning us to expect heavy snowfall from Tuesday night through Wednesday night, Nov. 29-30, that may make travel "difficult or impossible." An alert issued early Tuesday morning says people in the area from Highway 28 north, reaching to Wauconda and Republic, can expect 5-9 inches of snow, with mountain areas getting up to 10-15 inches. The snow is expected to start about 7 p.m. Tuesday night. Areas south of Highway 28 (the highway that connects Soap Lake and... Full story
Leaders in Electric City Tuesday night approved a slightly revised contract for police services with Coulee Dam after clarifying some language in it. The Electric City Council voted unanimously to approve the contract that will put the city’s law enforcement in the hands of Coulee Dam instead of Grand Coulee for the first time in many decades. Coulee Dam’s council voted last Wednesday to approve the contract with clarifications that had been worked out the prior two days after its last special meeting to consider the contract. Those inc...
The local school levy was passing by a better margin after vote tallies continued Tuesday in the four county election offices involved, with more ballots yet to count in two counties Thursday and Friday. With a total vote so far tallied at 630-571 in favor, Grand Coulee Dam School District’s Proposition No. 1 was winning in all counties but Grant by 52.46% of the vote as of 6:13 p.m. Tuesday night. That 4.92% margin had slimmed down from 5.66% an hour earlier after Grant County counted another batch of ballots, bringing their uncounted e...
Electric City will change from hiring Grand Coulee’s police department to enforce law in its city to contracting with a city slightly further away — Coulee Dam — after reviewing proposals from both departments for future police services. Details are still being smoothed out following a Monday city council meeting in Coulee Dam in which council members asked for clarifications, but their consensus was to accept the agreement in principle after clarifications were made. The deal will require Coulee Dam’s two-man department to double personn...
School board members Monday night accepted new “tuition agreements” between districts that have already been doing for decades what the new contracts will make legal, in the eyes of federal regulators. Grand Coulee Dam School District directors voted to OK the so-called “tuition” pacts with Nespelem and Keller school districts, whose students eventually attend junior high and high school in Coulee Dam, bringing with them federal “Impact Aid” funds to help pay for it. Because those schools get paid at a higher rate than the Coulee Dam distric...
The school levy was barely passing Tuesday night by a margin of just 1.38% of the 866 votes counted so far. The measure, which asked to replace the Grand Coulee Dam School District's current levies with one at half the combined rate of expiring levies, had slipped into the fail bracket by the slimmest of margins, two to five votes, in each of the four counties involved except Douglas, where it held a 23-vote favorable margin. Ballots could be postmarked by Tuesday, or inserted in a ballot drop...
Utility line crews in Okanogan County were still fixing outages from Monday's storm late Monday afternoon. In the immediate Grand Coulee Dam area, only a few flakes fluttered here and there, but a bit north it was a different story. Okanogan County reported at 10:38 a.m. Monday that electric utilities were experiencing small outages around the county, including Nespelem Valley Electric Cooperative. "It was the heavy, wet snow that was the culprit," NVEC General Manager Kevin Black said Tuesday as his linemen were finishing repairs near Bridgepo...
An Electric City couple pressed the city council Tuesday to start a discussion on the in-town deer population, which they said is now increasing and becoming a problem. Robbin and Carol Boyce said they’ve lived in the area since 1989 but never had problems with deer before 2010, and now it’s getting worse. Carol Boyce described problems with deer now ranging from her apparently tasty forsytvuhia bushes that are “just about toast” to an overly familiar buck who spooked her visiting adult granddaughter by coming too close behind her in the yar...
Lake Roosevelt High School postseason sports came to an end Friday night when the Raiders lost to Liberty High School's Lancers at Spangle, 15-6. That loss came a day after the Lady Raider volleyball team lost in Omak in their bid to advance past the District 6 semifinals in three sets to Manson on Thursday and in three sets to Okanogan on Saturday afternoon. They finished the season with a 10-8 record overall, 8-6 in league. Raider Coach Bubba Egbert was disappointed not to get to advance this...
A federal funding problem that could have cost the Grand Coulee Dam School District millions in future years, and several just past, has apparently been averted, Nespelem School District Superintendent Effie Dean said Monday. Federal authorities reviewing a practice the two districts have used for decades to share federal Impact Aid took exception to it last spring. The two districts, since 1995, have operated under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that some of the money from the federal Impact Aid program coming into Nespelem would be...
A tragedy that unfolded in Keller Thursday quickly spread to Nespelem as police searched through the night for suspects in the killing of two people and the shooting of a police officer in Keller. As police from agencies far and near answered a call not heard by residents listening to scanners for clues about what was happening, Colville Tribal Emergency Services posted a warning on Facebook about 7 p.m. asking Nespelem residents to stay in their homes. The mayor also issued that plea and added...